Rand Paul Quotes

The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.

I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.

I consider myself a kind of a one-man government-in-exile. I don't want to call it a government - let's call it one man's idea of American freedom in exile.

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is of right, absolute.

My freedom is more important than your good idea.

My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm—as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

I'm a big believer in freedom and people's rights to express themselves and not have government interfere in that type of thing.

The demand for individual freedom leads us to different realms, and it enables us to participate in social events.

We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.

You have to ask yourself, 'Who owns me? Do I own myself or am I just another piece of government property?'

If you give up freedom to get security, you deserve neither.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.

I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.

You cannot barter security for freedom, or freedom for security.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.